


black pearl

by candybank



Category: NINE PERCENT (Band), 乐华七子NEXT | NEX7, 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV)
Genre: M/M, dont even read ty, i really just be writing anything these days, mermaid au, prose garbage, word V O M I T
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 08:21:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18257444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candybank/pseuds/candybank
Summary: if the sea could talk, it would say this: i want to kiss the sky and be the mist, i want to feel the earth beneath my feet, i want to taste the sun, i want to hold the breeze.





	black pearl

**Author's Note:**

> (tag on a shady lookin bottle from alice in wonderland vc) [drink me!](https://twitter.com/zhengtingspig/status/1110827966664044544)

 

wenjun finds him in the aftermath of a stormy night, splintered in between a shipwreck and a morningstar. night-dark hair and moon-pale skin and black-pearl scales soaked in blood, glistening and red—even the long, unmoving lashes of his closed eyes glittering with the violence of it.

unnerved, he panics. wenjun, a fisherman of twenty years, who came into the world holding a net, a knife and a gutted fish, he spends all of his days tearing ribs and fins from flesh, but he sees blood in the water now and his heart starts pounding loudly. senses returning and going away and coming back again, he sees scales where skin should be, a tail where legs should be. and his heart, it tries to jump out of his chest into the water around his ankles, tries to swim away from the mess he’d encountered.

and wenjun, fingers shaking and clammy hands, who has never thought of what’s buried in the sand or what lurks in the water, he touches this stranger’s hips, where his body connects as if the night sky to the empty sea, and he doesn’t know what to make of something he doesn’t know. still, he picks up this marble-made man off of the broken floorboards, and he carries him to a straw hut swaying near a cave.

the straw hut is warm and quiet, water just beginning to boil inside a kettle, cloth and cushion folded and tucked away into one corner, everything pushed to the bare walls. it’s small enough to house one man, and barely big enough for two, but wenjun hauls this stranger in past the door, smearing blood along the sand, along the floor, and he lays out a bed for this stranger to lie on. 

it’s only then, with the kettle screaming and this stranger stirring awake, that wenjun really notices what he is. he stares, and watches, and waits—looking so long that he nearly burns his hand over an open flame. still, he looks on, awe-struck hazel eyes following the curves etched into the hard stone of this stranger’s torso, the wonders written along his tail.

it takes him far too long to remember the word for it—a mermaid.

a creature of the land and sea, a being of sky and story. and it takes him even longer to remember that this is supposed to be a fantasy, that he’d taken this man into his home without knowing who he is, or what he is. that he was too afraid of something new to think, too enchanted by a handsome face to think. 

dreamstate dissipating, reality settling, fear kicking in—hands trembling, he makes a cup of tea and wrings a towel.

wenjun sets the cup down on the floor. and he has just begun wiping at this stranger’s face when he comes to, brows furrowed, looking angry, looking confused. he stares at wenjun’s face for a moment, gaze steely and hard, but he says nothing. he looks around him, above him, ahead of him, and he says nothing until he sees the floor.

he stares, for a long time, at the tail and the fins spread in front of him. teary eyes follow rows and rows of scales and stop where they stop—at his hips. that he touches, and scratches, and tries to tear away until his nails break and wenjun takes the stranger’s hands to keep them away from himself. 

and this stranger, this beautiful man, this storybook creature, he breaks into silent sobs. and his face, smooth and ethereal, it’s cracked from beneath the surface, as if he has just found out something terrible. he lays his head on wenjun’s shoulder, upon his thin, tattered shirt, and he cries until sleep takes him as the ocean takes a flood.


End file.
